User:Wiki5127pedia/sandbox/Memorial of the Great Famine in Beirut

The Great Famine Memorial is built in Beirut in memory of the victims of the Great War of 1914-1918 in Lebanon. It is located between the French Embassy and the Saint Joseph University in Beirut.

This memorial was designed in 2016 by Christian Taoutel (curator of the Memorial and Lebanese historian) and produced by the Lebanese artist Yazan Halwani in collaboration with Ramzi Toufic Salameh (Lebanese writer), the Central Bank of Lebanon, the Municipality and the Governorate of the city of Beirut, as well as the Saint-Joseph University of Beirut. installed in 2018, it has still not been officially opened for political reasons.

The memorial represents an olive tree, symbol of Mount Lebanon. The leaves are chiseled with calligraphy words in Arabic from the lexical field of Famine. Some take up extracts from texts written by Lebanese authors about famine. The Great Famine of 1915 - 1918 caused the death of nearly a third of the population of Mount Lebanon. This disaster was the result of multiple causes combined in a specific period: the maritime blockade imposed by the English fleet in the Mediterranean, the invasion of locusts destroying all crops, epidemics (such as typhus, cholera, smallpox and fever typhoid) and, above all, the embargo put in place by the Ottomans on all foodstuffs.